The Tower
by ecmada
Summary: Real Sweeney Todd. I am not exaggerating. Read story to learn more. Sorry. Suck at summaries.


**All righty, I'm back. I'm sure I have angered a few people by on my honest reviews, but let us try to look past that and let's listen to a story (I should probably tell you that I grew bored with Tobias' drug problems, in fact, if you want me to, I'll tell you what the ending would have been in the next chapter). **

**I am fairly certain that all of you know that our lovely man Sweeney Todd was based off a penny blood in the 1840s. One thing led to another, and somehow we ended up from sheer greed and pearls to music and revenge. However, there are a few historians that dedicate their lives to proving that Sweeney Todd existed. One such historian is named Peter Haining. He wrote a novel providing historical documents proving Sweeney Todd's existence. Yes, he says Mrs. Lovett existed. Yes, Sweeney Todd killed people and Mrs. Lovett baked the bodies into pies and she sold them and she was rich and she was a widow and blah blah blah. **

**When I say "he proved" I am using the term rather lightly. He did not provide a bibliography, which seriously annoys me. And the said "documents" that he found, and the newspapers, and whatnot, no one can fricking find them. And if they really existed, then people would have found them a while back. Why? Because people are nosy. **

**Anyway, I'm going to write a fanfiction based on Haining's ideas. Enjoy.**

**Oh. By the way……… Sweenett.**

October is always a month of dreadful bitterness, but it seems even more so.

How, you ask? Add gin to anything and it will make it bitter. The English had just discovered the deliciousness and the intoxicating escape that is gin. Add financial woes, violence, fear, an insane king, and a country in the ruins; well, that is just catastrophe.

I sigh. I am being melodramatic again. Or maybe honest? I don't know anymore.

Today, on October 26,in the year of Our Lord 1767, I turn eleven. Mother was actually sober enough to give me a kiss good morning and to say happy birthday. Her words were not even very slurred! It gave me a good and optimistic feeling, but then I saw Father. He was definitely not sober.

"Happy birthday, Sweeney!" he sang and he started beating me with his belt. I learned a very long time ago not to cry. I instead focused on the shabby furniture and how my breath hung in the air. I once went inside a neighbor's house and it was positively freezing outside, but I still could not see my breath. That amazed me.

"Boy, are you paying attention?" roared my father, Sweeney Todd Senior.

"No," I reply. "I ne'er listen to you."

Well, that was stupid, now thinking about it.

I touch my torn lip and I spit out blood. It tastes salty. I hear that only your blood tastes salty. How did that person figure it out? Where they drinking blood or something? Or is it some queer phrase? Never mind.

Anyway, after my so-called father beat me to a bloody pulp, I ran out of the house. London, although being the enormous shithole that it is, always provides some sort of entertainment for me. Why, just last week, I saw a man entwined in a strange embrace with a woman in Hyde's Park. They were moaning and their mouths touched, and I was not quite sure what to make of it. Several people that were strolling through the park clucked their tongues in disgust and walked very far around them, just to prove a point, I think. However, when the two people pulled apart, the man told the woman that he loved her.

Love.

I don't care for it much. It's fake, all fake. Happiness is a bloody illusion, and love is just illusion's drug of choice. Call me self-centered if you want, but I die a little inside every time I see a happy family going to the market. I think to myself,

"Why can't that be me? Why can't my father love me like that?"

Mother "loves" me, I think; she doesn't say so, but she pets me and calls me a pretty boy quite a few times a day, especially when Father isn't looking. But why the devil would she put me in this world if she didn't have money so I couldn't enjoy myself in it?

I walk along the disorganized and filthy streets of London to head to the Tower, which is less than a mile away from my house. Supposed God above, I love that place. The torture devices are just astounding. Like last year, I saw one that was sort of like a bar of metal and you put it in a person's mouth. When you twist the top, the bottom opens up and it dislocate the jaw. There is supposedly a ton of pain, and the person goes into cardiac arrest and they die. Other instruments were the iron gauntlets (which hung prisonders from the ceiling and their joints could literally be torn from their sockets) and the "Scavengers Daughter" (a bunch of iron hoops would be tightened around a person's body until they bled).

The warden who provided me with gruesome stories of how the instruments were used on people is sady not there. Luckily, I see the usual group of beggar boys by the tower and they lower their hands and smile when they recognize me.

"'Ello, Sweeney," they tease in their dreadful Cockney accent. "'Ow are ya on this fine day?"

"Just dandy, sirs, have you gotten anything?"

"Just taters n' stuffin'," they reply. I sigh inwardly, knowing that by saying "potatoes and stuffing" they truly mean "nothing". I used to feel some sort of obligation to help them, but once I gave them a penny I found off the street, and Father beat me black and blue for not giving it to him.

"Any executions today?" I ask, changing the subject.

"Not yet," one boy answers. "I 'ope they 'ang 'im."

"Why?" I scoff. "There is nothing truly impressive about a hanging. They just fall from the platform and die."

"Aye, but that's when it's done good," replies another boy. "When it's done bad, that's when it's fun to watch."

"What happens when the hanging is wrong?"

"They twitch and can't breathe. Sometimes they twitch fo' ten minutes."

Death by suffocation sounds dreadful to me. "Oh. I suppose that's different, then."

"Aye, but nuffin has 'appened today." The beggars sigh sadly. It is the only time they can see someone suffer more than themselves. "'Ow's your papa doing?"

I grimace. I want to say, horrible, thanks for asking. Ever since no one can afford his master's silk, he has been drinking more and beating me more. Since Mother winds silk for a living, she too has not been making much money, and Father does not appreciate that much.

Times are hard, I want to say. But my times are not as hard as theirs, for, at least I have a somewhat stable roof above my head. So, I do what I do best: I lie.

"He's fine. His back is hurting again, but other than that, he is fine."

"Good. Now move it, Sweeney, I spot a rich chap!" snaps an older boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen. He feigns a limp and he takes off his ragged cap for an aristocrat passing by. "Please, sir, spare a penny?"

"No," says the aristocrat stiffly. "I would rather be shaved by a bear rather than give money to you. Now, get out of my sight!"

The beggars run off, leaving me very much alone, and I wander over to the zoo by the Tower. The lions once amazed me a few years ago, but now they bore me with their pathetic roars and their long manes. They are just trapped, and I am out here. They are meant to be watched. That is truly sad.

A woman passes by me with a strange burn on her shoulder. Closer inspection tells me that the skin is ruined, and I think I recognize her from the Spitalfields' riot last year.

People from Father's workplace were angry about calico. It was something about calico, I remember that. Father was always roaring and fuming over the cheapness of calico. Maybe it made his wage less. I don't know. Anyway, the weavers basically attacked all the women and girls that wore calico. They throw acid on their clothes and actually ripped the gowns from their backs. Police came and shot five of the weavers.

I was across the street at the time. Never in my life had I been so pointlessly terrified for another human being. But at that moment, as I watched my father throw acid on a girl's skirt, I realized that there had to be a better way. There had to be an easier and better way to make money and to survive.


End file.
